Palestinian hunger strike heightens tension with Israel

What We’re Reading

Palestinian prisoners' strike

A hunger strike by more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners over their treatment in Israeli jails has turned into a heated dispute over whether the leader of the protest secretly broke the fast, and whether Israel tempted him to do so.

Video clips purporting to show Marwan Barghouti eating in his prison cell are unlikely to damage his image among prisoners and the broader Palestinian public. Instead, they seem to be having the opposite effect.

“The longer FIFA allows the issue of Israel’s settlement clubs to go unresolved, the more its credibility will suffer, the more football will be politicized, and the more it will find itself drawn into the larger Israeli-Palestinian entanglement,” write Hugh Lovatt and Martin Konecny.

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has spoken of his “profound grief and sorrow” after hearing the testimonies of Palestinians whose land has been put beyond their reach by the vast concrete wall Israel has built near Bethlehem.

Israeli politics

In an interview with Al-Monitor, HaBayit HaYehudi leader Naftali Bennett says that “the age of maneuvering is over” as the Israeli government must be honest with US President Donald Trump about the reality of creating a Palestinian state.

While he mentioned terror organizations in his enumeration of Israel’s enemies, he also implied that those who “act against us” include Arab Knesset members and Israelis who attended an alternative Memorial Day ceremony with Palestinians last week.

The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the second-largest political group in the European Parliament, has signed a cooperation agreement with the Arab Movement for Renewal faction (Ta’al) within the Joint List party, strengthening its relations with Israeli-Arab political parties.